Archbishop Donald Arden
Born: Boscombe, England April 12, 1916
Died: Romsey, Hampshire July 18, 2014
Donald Arden, who died peacefully at his home in Romsey, Hampshire on July 18 at the age of 98, will be best remembered by friends and admirers in the worldwide Anglican Communion as a man who notched up 50 years as a bishop. He will also be remembered and respected as a senior cleric who played such a significant role in the indigenization of the churches in central and southern Africa during the 1960s and 1970s.
When he was consecrated Bishop of Nyasaland (Malawi) on November 30, 1961 the region was in turmoil.
The British imposed Central African Federation (CAF) which linked the two Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe) with Nyasaland (Malawi) between1953-1963, was running out of steam.
Hundreds of Africans had been imprisoned after a state of emergency had been declared by the British Governor of Nyaslaand in 1959. Millions of blacks were demanding that white church leaders get their bottoms off the fence and come down on their side - the side of Uhuru (freedom).
In his seminal work "Church State and Society in Malawi" - the Anglican Case," the Malawian church leader and academic James Tengatenga (Zomba, 2006) observed that the in-coming bishop faced a formidable task.
He writes: "Arden arrived the year Nyasaland got internal self-government. The Central African Federation was ending. He was the last white bishop in the diocese. He came as a white church leader in a black- led country. His responsibility was to bring the church into a position where it was no longer stigmatized as anti-Malawian but one which co-operated with the government of the day. "
To do this became the controlling principle of Donald Arden's twenty year ministry in Malawi.
Donald Arden was born in Boscombe (Dorset, southern England) on April 12, 1916, the youngest of three sons.
When he was nine, the family moved to Australia but in 1934 he returned to England.
After attending Leeds University, he trained for the priesthood at The College of the Resurrection at Mirfield and its strict, monastic, discipline stayed with him throughout his long life.
He was ordained in 1939 and served first as a curate in London, moving to South Africa in 1943 when he joined the Pretoria African Mission. He ministered in several rural and city parishes, tasting what life was like for ordinary Africans on the eve of the National Party's victory in 1948 and then the birth of apartheid.
Between 1951 -1961, Arden was Director of the Usuthu Mission in Swaziland before stepping in the footsteps of the outgoing Bishop Frank Thorne in Nyasaland.
A form of gentle English apartheid (based on class rather than race) existed in the Nyasaland churches with five "white" congregations known as the European Chaplaincy. Arden merged them into the diocese and set about training African priests taking into account their varying academic qualifications.
"Donald Arden was a sensitive, caring pastor," writes Tengatenga, "who supported both his clergy and laity when support was due, regardless of their political affiliations."
In June 1962 Donald met a young English schoolteacher Jane Riddle who had gone to Nyasaland in 1959.
Three months later, they married and the service was conducted by Archdeacon Habil Chipembere whose son, Henry, was to lead a revolt against President Banda soon after Malawi's independence on July 6, 1964.
The marriage broke the tradition that missionaries attached to the United Missionaries of Central Africa (UMCA) did not marry. In 1963 the couple embarked on a tour of parts of England and America to raise fund for the diocese and Donald Arden was instrumental in forming a number of healthcare organisations in Malawi, one of the most successful being Malawi Against Polio.
In 1971 Donald Arden was elected Archbishop of Central Africa, following the death in a motor car accident of Oliver Green-Wilkinson.
During his archbishopric, Arden frequently visited Botswana, Rhodesia and Zambia which were all in the Province of Central Africa.
Following Ian Smith's UDI in November 1965, Christians had a tough time meeting up with one another and provincial meetings organized by Arden were sometimes the only chance Christians had of meeting one another and laying plans for the Christian communities in their respective countries.
Donald, his wife and two sons, Bazil and Chris, left Africa in February 1981 and returned to England.
Donald became priest-in-charge at St Margaret's Church in Uxbridge, on the edge of London and was there until 1986.
For the next 25 years, he was an Honorary Curate on the staff of St Alban's in North Harrow, London where he played an active role promoting Anglo-Malawi associations, acting as an observer of the first truly democratic election in Malawi's history in 1994 which ended the 30-year rule of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP).
As an active member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, Donald Arden participated in the ordination of the first women priests at Saint Paul's in 1994.
In 2011 in the same cathedral, the Bishop of London , Richard Chartres, celebrated Mass to mark the 50th anniversary of Donald Arden's consecration as a bishop. When he died, memorial services were held in several parts of Malawi which Donald Arden loved so much and served so well.
(Donald Seymour Arden b.1916 died 2014)
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